Aurora
by Wandergirl108
Summary: Everypony is born as they are for a reason, but sometimes that reason isn't initially clear. What happens when a unicorn wishes she was a pegasus instead? Please do not review; a note after the story explains more.


Even as an infant, Aurora loved the sky.

She was born a normal baby unicorn, violet with a chestnut mane of long, curly locks. Her eyes were a pale aqua, and she thought they were her prettiest feature. From the moment she could walk, she loved to lie on her back in the grass and look up at the clouds, and imagine herself flying among them like a pegasus. Before long, she started wishing she'd been born a pegasus, or at least an Alicorn - surely, to feel the cold wind under feathered wings would be the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Naturally, winter was her favorite season - snowflakes were frozen bits of clouds, that could be shaped the way the pegasi shaped the real clouds. It wasn't uncommon for her to be playing out in the snow and pretend to be high in the sky, looking down on a vast expanse of clouds, which she could walk on or dive into or shape however she wanted. Meanwhile, in summer, she would pick leaves from her favorite trees and tie them all together - a feat that took most of the season, since she did it without unicorn magic - and then attach them to her back and stand at the top of her favorite hill with her back to whatever way the wind was blowing, and pretend that the leaves were wings trying to lift her off the ground.

Aurora's horn was oddly a darker purple from the rest of her body, and when she was a young foal, a lot of her classmates joked that it was because she never used it. Even when writing, she would use her mouth, like an earth pony or a pegasus, instead of holding her pencil with unicorn magic. While her peers started dreaming of getting their Cutie Marks, she wished her horn would just fall off and wings would sprout from her back instead. Her parents tried to tell her that not using her horn wouldn't make a difference, that she was a unicorn and that was just how it was, but still, she hoped, prayed, dreamed.

Then, one year, when Princess Celestia came to visit on one of her normal rounds of Equestria, Aurora pushed through crowds and struggled her way to the great white Alicorn with no regard for politeness, and threw herself on the ground before her.

"Please, Princess Celestia, I need you to get rid of my horn and give me wings!" she cried. "I don't want to be a unicorn, I want to be a pegasus, I want to be in the sky among the clouds! I-I've practiced for this my whole life, I don't need unicorn magic, and I don't want it! Please, I'm begging you, fix me - give me wings!"

Her parents were horrified at her rudeness, but Celestia was as serene as a summer breeze, and she just smiled at the filly. "Just because you don't have wings doesn't mean you can't enjoy the sky," she told the child. "Instead of fighting against your birth, try to find a way to use your magic to achieve your dreams."

The foal cried, her heart broken. "That's easy for you to say!" she wailed. "You were born with wings! All I want is to have wings! Please, if you're the wonderful princess everyone says you are, you'll grant me this one wish - you can do it, you're Princess Celestia! Oh please, _please_ , just get rid of my stupid horn and give me wings!"

Unfrozen from their stunned mortification, her parents hurried forward and tried to usher her away from the princess, begging the regal Alicorn's pardon, but Celestia motioned for them to step aside. Then, she brought her head down to Aurora's level and touched the tip of her long white horn to the filly's purple one. "My power is great, but I can't change a pony's birth," she said gently. "Everypony is born as they are for a reason. You came into this world as a unicorn because that's how you will achieve your destiny."

"Don't make me give up the sky," Aurora sobbed.

"Never," Celestia cooed. "Don't ever try to give up your love for the sky - it's part of you, same as your horn. Your destiny is in the clouds somewhere, and you don't have to fly to find it. Just trust that, when you find your special talent, it will grant your wish."

"W-what about you?" Aurora hiccuped. "Did you get what you wanted when you got your Cutie Mark?"

Silence fell across Equestria. Rarely, if ever, did anyone think of Princess Celestia as a pony who had been a foal, who had gained her Cutie Mark when she came of age - she was simply Princess Celestia, the immortal monarch of Equestria, and always had been. Everyone in attendance held their breath. What could the princess's response to this possibly be?

Celestia herself was stunned. No one ever treated her like a pony - she was always a goddess, revered and feared, and in truth, she hated it. This filly's lack of doubt that she'd once been young warmed her heart more than the sun. In return, she took a minute to relive the childhood she'd felt she had to forget just to be who she was, contemplating the question, to make sure she gave Aurora the best answer.

"It was a long time ago," she said at last, and all the ponies gasped at the admission that she'd ever been a child. "My mother was the sun, and my father was the sky…in their coats, the rays of dawn and the stars of the night shone brightly. My younger sister and I knew we would succeed them someday - that was our destiny, it was known even before we were born. Day and night had to be split between us, and…I always thought my father's coat was so majestic, with the gleams of silver scattered across an endless void, where limitless possibilities stretched forever. I liked to think my own coat was white like the moon, and that my sister was blue like the daytime sky. Of course, it didn't turn out that way…but when I realized that the sun was my destiny, and my sister became the night, she told me that her bond with the night had revealed to her that the sun is a star, like all the other stars in the sky - that we ruled the same sky, the same universe, and I got to be closer to it than she could ever be. When our parents confirmed this, I realized I'd gotten what I wanted all along; it just wasn't the way I thought it would be."

Aurora's aqua eyes still shone with tears, and she sniffled. "It can't work like that for me, though," she whimpered.

"Don't give up your dream," Celestia told her. "It will come true. And it will come true because you are a unicorn."

At last, Aurora's parents ushered her away. She was grounded for a month for being so rude to the princess, but as long as she could see the sky from her bedroom window, she didn't care. Everypony else tried to forget Celestia's story - it was essentially blasphemy, it crushed everypony's conception of reality, and so they desperately put it out of their heads. But Aurora never forgot, and she turned it over and over in her mind every day while watching the sky from her window, even after her punishment ended. When she saw the sun in the day, and the stars at night, the fact that those lights were the same - that only distance made the difference - made her start to think that maybe being so far away from the sky didn't mean she'd never get to be part of it after all. Maybe, if she couldn't go to the sky, the sky could somehow come to her. Slowly, she started to use her unicorn magic for the standard things, like reading and writing, and became 'normal'; but every day, she still waited, her eyes on the heavens.

As she grew older, she started making friends in school, like a normal pony - nopony had forgotten her obsession with the sky, but she wasn't teased for it very often anymore once she'd been using her unicorn magic for a while. Ponies around her started getting their Cutie Marks, and funnily enough, each mark seemed to perfectly suit the ponies that got them - always in ways that only fully made sense once the marks appeared, but still, Aurora could look back on her memories of a pony and think "Of _course_ that was their special talent, why didn't anyone see it sooner?" Her own Cutie Mark, however, didn't come. She started reading books on weather patterns and such, the duties of the pegasi, when she was old enough to understand the complicated terms, but as wonderful as it was to lose herself in the book worlds of the heavens, her own special talent didn't present itself to her.

Years passed, and soon, nearly all the ponies her age had their Cutie Marks - there were still some who didn't, but their numbers were dwindling by the day. Aurora tried not to despair - everypony got their Cutie Mark someday, _every_ pony, there were no exceptions - but still, she couldn't wait for the sky to come to her. Then, one winter, as the pegasi flew in with snow clouds to bring the icy season to Equestria, Aurora was outside, watching the brown grass get coated by the white snow, and the water freeze over in the ponds and lakes, and she felt like the cold was progressing more slowly than it had in previous years. One of her favorite things about winter - the way her breath misted in the frosty air, so it looked like she was breathing out little clouds - was taking so long to happen, she almost worried that the pegasi were going to make this whole winter too warm. She sat down by a pond next to her house and stared at the slowly cooling water, wishing it would hurry up so she could run across the ice like a pegasus galloping through the sky, as she did every year. Then, suddenly, her horn prickled, as if she'd called upon its magic, and the next thing she knew, a blue beam streamed from the tip and started moving back and forth across the surface of the pond like an eraser; in the magic's wake, the water was turned to solid ice, and before ten seconds had passed, the formerly liquid body was frozen into a solid block.

She jumped up from where she was sitting and leapt onto the ice - it was so clear, so smooth! Looking down at her hooves as they hit the frozen water, it really did look like she was running on air. Sheer joy bubbled up from her chest, coming out as laughter. When at last she had to stop galloping to catch her breath, she noticed that ice particles were flowing from her nose and mouth in little clouds. Hardly daring to believe it, she turned to look at her left flank, and there, between her tail and her hind leg, was the image of a snowflake. Her right flank bore the same picture.

"Mom! Dad!" she screamed, running back to the house. "I got my Cutie Mark! _I got my Cutie Mark_!"

As with every other foal's Cutie Mark, hers made so much sense, in ways that hadn't become apparent until it appeared. _Ice_ was her special talent, of course it was! Snow was the cloud fluff of the ground, ice was the traversable air of the earthbound. Of course, of _course_ , her destiny was to make ice - ice to cover the land in the winter, ice to make ice cubes and ice cream to cool ponies off in the summer.

And with her special talent, she was able to find her dream: Though she couldn't fly, every winter, she worked with the pegasi to freeze the land, to create the snow and the ice. It was the perfect destiny.

* * *

 **If anyone wants to do something with Aurora, anything at all, I would be honored if you do; just, don't tell me about it. Please don't review this story, I wouldn't be able to bear hearing anyone talk about anything pony-related. Let me explain.**

 **I used to be a Pegasister, but when some venomous people in the community that I wouldn't have met otherwise tore my life apart, sending me into the darkest time of my life, the franchise itself was forever tainted for me, and now I can't even see a pony without feeling sick to my stomach. It was never the fault of the franchise, though, and those days were fun while they lasted…When I was coloring in a coloring book for adults recently (not adult-themed, just more intricate than kids' coloring books) and found myself coloring a unicorn's face, all my fond memories welled up in me, and I had to bring her to life. I never did have closure in leaving the fandom - and just before I left, I was trying to create an OC and failing - so this, I think, is my final farewell to the franchise and my days as a fan. In bringing Aurora to life, I have my closure.**

 **So, if you want to give Aurora more life, she's yours. Either way, please don't post any reviews, any at all, no matter what - any that come into my inbox will be thrown straight in the trash and erased, I will never read them. I have to do it that way, to protect my own shakily-reconstructed sanity. If you enjoy this unicorn OC, thank you; if you do not, so be it. But please leave me alone.**


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